Devious and dubious idea: Congress on EC's call for special revision of electoral rolls in Bihar ahead of polls

New Delhi: Congress on Thursday "firmly" opposed the Election Commission's "devious and dubious idea" of ‘Special Intensive Revision’ (SIR) of the electoral roll in Bihar, saying there is "enough reason to be suspicious" of the exercise carried out just a few months ahead of the Assembly elections.

The party's Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE), which monitors the conduct of free and fair elections by the EC, claimed that poll body has admitted that "all is not well" with the electoral rolls, which Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has been "repeatedly pointing out", and the SIR is a "cure worse than the disease".

Trinamool Congress Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and CPI(ML)L General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya also raised objections to the EC move.

While Mamata alleged that the EC was trying to implement NRC through backdoors, Bhattacharya wrote to the EC saying that such an intensive revision was conducted in Bihar last in 2002 when there were no elections approaching and the size of the electorate was around five crore.

An EAGLE statement claimed the EC will visit every household and re-enroll every eligible voter in Bihar after a verification of identity and residential documents and in simple terms, the poll body wants to "discard the current electoral rolls entirely and create a fresh new electoral roll" in Bihar.

"SIR is a devious and dubious idea in the disguise of a solution. Lakhs of union and state government official will now control and dictate who has correct documents and who doesn't, who gets to vote in the upcoming Bihar elections etc," the EAGLE, consisting of senior leaders Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh, Praveen Chakravarty, Abhishek Singhvi, Pawan Khera, Gurdeep Singh Sappal, Nitin Raut and Vamshi Chand Reddy, said.

"This carries a huge risk of wilful exclusion of voters using the power of the state machinery. The EC has come up with arduous rules for providing birth certificates of voters and their parents depending on the year of birth. These rules are arbitrary, whimsical and onerous on the estimated 8.1 crore eligible voters in Bihar in 2025 (report of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare)," it said.

It also said the EC had mooted a proposal on March 8 for electoral roll cleaning using Aadhaar, which "while not perfect, is a more viable alternative solution" and asked, "why did the EC abandon that to suddenly announce an SIR three months after the proposal?"

"Given the dogged resistance to the Congress' long pending demand for Maharashtra electoral rolls and its dubious actions in the past, there is enough reason to be suspicious about EC's plans for an SIR in Bihar just a few months before an election. The Congress firmly oppose the SIR proposal of the EC for the Bihar state elections and subsequently in other states,” it added.